Our potatoes are finally starting to poke through the soil! It’s always a bit exciting to see our seed potatoes start to push greenery and the transformation from a root to a plant!
We weren’t potato enthusiasts at all until we actually started growing them. For years, we figured they were cheap enough to buy that there’s little value in growing them ourselves. Fortunately, years ago, we decided to give them a try and as it turns out, they’ve become one of our most favorite crops!
We love the “perpetual” nature of potatoes. We’re able to save some of our potato crop each year, meaning we always have free seed potatoes for the next year. We’ve been running the same seed potatoes for nearly a decade now! It doesn’t take “special” storage requirements, either. Just a tote with some holes in the lid, shoved under our guest bed! Zero-input crops are definitely “up there” in our book!
Growing ‘taters also requires very little effort and input. We pretty much toss them in the ground and harvest them around first frost. We’ll sometimes do a bit of weeding of the bed if it gets bad, but certainly don’t put much effort into them. They’ll even grow in poor and cold soils, requiring very little NPK to produce actual potatoes. We often do fertilize our potatoes, just for a bit of production benefit, but only once or twice per season. But, if you’re plagued with permafrost, potatoes should be on your short list of successful crops!
Then, the harvest. Our favorite part! There’s something about digging through the earth to seek out those little nuggets that is just a good time. We’ve done it in the rain and mud, it still brought smiles to our faces! We liken it to hunting for gold, instant and frequent positive feedback for a bit of hard work!
Potatoes are an extremely versatile crop, storing exceptionally well for many months after the growing season ends. We often don’t even bother to do any potato preservation until December, giving us a fun, garden related project to do during the depths of winter!
